Evening All,
My Philips SBC-AH1000 seems to of bitten the bullet. It's providing me with a lovely constant volume linked Hummmmmmmmmmm out of the blue.
In doing some research into a replacement it seems, rather disappointingly, there are not all that many options to swap the unit out with like for like feature wise. I like the Dolby Headphone stuff, the content I watch and music I listen to works well for me when processed with the feature. I could probably get used to living without it, and hopefully a high end dedicated headphone amp would bring more out of my HD650s to make up for it.
But, before I jump ship from Dolby Headphone do I have any viable options? It looks like to get a good quality amp I need to do this separately with a Dolby Headphone capable DAC then push the processed audio out to an amp and onwards to my HD650s. I'm not looking to spend the earth but I am not working with a silly low budget either. I would prefer a DAC somewhere in the mix, be it integrated or separately as I would rather not have to upgrade my PC soundcard from the integrated SPDIF I currently use.
In shot the options I am looking at are:
PC SPDIF > DAC > AMP > HD650s
or
PC SPDIF > DAC/AMP Combo > HD650s
or
PC Analogue > AMP > HD650s (With soundcard upgrade)
Would appreciate any advice. Especially some opinions on how much more I can get out of my HD650s with a 'proper' AMP over the SBC-AH100s effort. If it's much more I will consider dropping Dolby headphone and going the uprated soundcard route.
